


it's killing me

by hotmesslewis



Category: Lewis and Clark
Genre: Comfort Sex, Death, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, This Is a Nasty Piece of Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 04:52:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12101124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotmesslewis/pseuds/hotmesslewis
Summary: Meriwether Lewis commits an act of violence that he just can't quite get over on his own.





	it's killing me

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely based on an historical incident.

What Meriwether Lewis regretted more than anything was not that he killed a man, but that he did it so easily.

Had his hand shaken as he pulled the trigger, the guilt might have not been so overwhelming.  Had he even paused for the slightest moment to think about what he was doing— _taking the life of another human being_ —his sin might have not seemed so great.

He tried, time and again, to justify it to himself.  And he knew that he was justified—it was him or the Indian man; it was very nearly both of them, in all honesty, who would have been lying dead in the heat of the summer on the plains.

The memory of it all was vivid in startling reds and browns as he walked back, without the horses, to his small exploring band’s camp in the plains.  The rise in his blood as he chased the three horse thieves, curses springing easily from his lips in his blinding rage.

“Come back here, you sons of bitches.  Give me back my God damned horse!”

And then.

That moment.

One of the Blackfeet warriors stopped his running, dropped down on one hand, spun around to face their white pursuer.  He swung one foot around, raising dust around him in his wake.  Rolling back onto his feet, planting his legs apart, he raised the old British musket to his shoulder.

Lewis mirrored the action, setting his own legs apart, pulling his own rifle level to his shoulder, feeling, with what he recognized even at the time was an odd intensity, the heft of the weapon in his hand.  It must have weighed a ton, at least as heavy as the keelboat full of men and supplies.  How was it possible that one man alone could have lifted such a weapon?

But lift it Meriwether Lewis did, coolly, dispassionately.  He didn’t feel his heart pounding in his throat, or hear it beating like a call to war in his ears.  For the moment he heard nothing as he steadied his sights and his finger tightened on the trigger. 

Silence.

The noise of the shot and the kick of the rifle hit him at the same time, the sound and the feel hitting him like a wave, followed only then by the sight as, shot through the stomach, the Indian man crumpled, fell to the earth.  But Meriwether Lewis only heard his heart hammering within him, every part of his body echoing it precisely, moments later, when the nobly dying man— _the man he had killed_ —raised himself to his knees, raised the musket, and raised a cry.

Lewis felt the bullet as it sped past him, the high-pitched sound not unlike the whine of the mosquito. 

He felt the wind of it in his feathery hair.

And in that moment, he was truly glad that he had shot the bastard.

But then the warrior fell to the ground again, giving his body to the earth, and Lewis was overcome with sympathy.

It could have been him.

Oh, so very easily.

It could have been him.

Dead.

Alone, save for the sky and the grasses of the plains.

And it was he that was responsible for this death.

No, murder. 

Death was far too kind of a word.

This was the intentional taking of another human life.

Never mind that it was self-defense.

Never mind that he was a soldier, that this was a skirmish with another warrior.

This was murder.

His face remained hard as he turned from his sin and walked slowly back to the sun drenched spot on the plans where the explorers had made camp.

The words repeated over and again in his mind.

_It could have been me._

_This was murder._

A dark voice offered up laughter from the corners of his mind.

It was the first and the last time that Meriwether Lewis would ever kill another human being.

He needed to see William Clark.

-

Lewis told the story of his kill to the men with the bravado of a soldier, keeping himself from bragging only by tempering his story with the authority of his command.  He was not the only man who had killed that day—Reubin Field had also claimed a life, planting his knife in the heart of one of the Blackfeet without so much as a second thought.  With the cold smile of anger, Meriwether Lewis had left an offering with Field’s kill, placing around the dead man’s neck one of the medals of peace that they gave to chiefs as presents of the United States good intentions towards the native tribes.

Lewis intended the irony fully.

Two days later the small exploring party finally met again with the larger body of the Corps, and Lewis saw Clark for the first time since his sin.

William Clark stood in front of the captains’ tent in all of his bright glory.  He wore simply a white linen shirt, open at the collar, and his soft leather leggings; his feet were bare, his toes curling slightly in the grass.  His lopsided grin was one of loving welcome, tinged with carnal insinuations, and it broke Meriwether Lewis.

The taste of guilt filled his mouth, like arsenic.  No, it was sweeter, gentler than the bite of arsenic—guilt tasted like almonds.

Lewis didn’t look at Clark directly, but pushed past him and into the dim light of the tent.  He stood for a moment, breathing hard, clutching his rifle, staring at it in horror.  Light fell on him as the concerned Clark entered behind him, and Lewis savagely threw his rifle into the field desk, chipping off some wood on one corner.

“Meriwether.”  Clark was appalled by this sudden violence, but kept himself calm.  “I take it all did not go as you expected?”

But Lewis gave no heed to his words, instead ripping his clothes from his body as if they were on fire and kicking them to the corner.  When he stood naked, his body cooling in the tent, he scooped up the buffalo skins in which Clark slept and held them close to his face, breathing in the smell of the animal and of Clark.  He wrapped himself in the skin and lay on the ground, curled and facing away from Clark.

“Meri.  Please, tell me.  What happened?”

His voice seemed to come across the great distance of the plains he had just traveled, as though he had left it behind.  It was quiet and flat.  “Things did not go as expected.  We accomplished nothing.  A group of young Blackfeet warriors joined with us, made camp with us, broke bread with us, before treacherously trying to steal our weapons and stealing our horses.  We killed two of them.  Reubin stabbed one through the heart, and I shot another.”

Lewis’s voice didn’t break on the word “shot;” instead it lifted, and in that Clark discovered what was truly bothering Lewis.  He crossed to the other side of the tent, stepping over Lewis’s prone body, and sat next to him, so he could look him in the face.

Though he could keep his voice even, his face was wet.

“I’ve never killed a man before, Billy.”

The memory of the first time Clark killed a man hit him with the force of a buffalo stampede.  He bragged about it around the campfire, of course—nearly all of the men did, some of them waving scalps or other souvenirs taken from their dead like trophies.  And Clark never doubted that some of them genuinely meant their assumed pride, that they took some sort of perverse pleasure in the blood of the dead on their hands.  But more of them, he suspected, didn’t.  More of them likely went back to the tent and spent the at least the first night sleepless, burdened with the memory of the faces of the dying, the never-ending sound of the scream or gasp of death, the exact shade of the fallen man’s blood.  Clark could never summon tears for the men he killed.  But he had sobbed, loud and hard, until his throat was raw and his voice hoarse, well into the night.

He always wondered, could he have cried just for that first man that he killed, if he could have taken it easier.

But seeing Meriwether Lewis’s tears sparkling in the dim light of the tent before him, he knew that he was wrong.

“Oh, Meri,” Billy murmured quietly, reaching his hand out to touch Lewis’s tears.  But Lewis drew away.

“Don’t.”  Declared firmly in the darkness of the tent.

A pause, heavy with guilt and need. 

“I don’t deserve you, Billy.”  It was spoken like the truth.

“No.  Never say that, Meriwether.”  Clark was determined to touch him somehow, and let his hand slip under the animal skin.

“I said no!”  Lewis hurled words at Clark.  “Don’t you dare touch me, you bastard.”  His eyes had lost their blue, their humanity—they were the dull gray of a dying wolf, fighting until he drew his last breath, daring to be forever damned before he wouldn’t taken another down with him.

The word cut into Billy Clark, but it only made him more determined.  Clark knew what Lewis needed.  He wanted to share his own story, his own guilt, but he couldn’t, he lacked the words for it.  Lewis always had been far more skilled with words.  His pen was of the most sublime grace. He was the better orator, even through his shyness and his awkwardness.

But Clark could give Lewis what he needed.  And though Lewis didn’t want it, Clark would be damned if Lewis didn’t get it.

Clark didn’t speak a word as he took hold of Lewis’s shoulders and rolled the younger man, weakened by his guilt, on to his back.  He pressed the shoulders into the ground before unwrapping the buffalo skin from Lewis’s body and gazing full upon the lines of his body whose feel he knew so well.  He had seen Lewis naked many times before, but never had his body been so still—usually Lewis was in motion when he was nude, as if in fear of his exposure and believing that motion could keep him safe from vulnerability.  For the most part, it did.

So Clark took the moment to cherish the graceful build of his lover in full.  The handsome face, the way the soft brown hair could never lie flat in the front, the liquid eyes, the secret smile of the softly rounded lips, the strong line of the jaw Clark knew wonderfully well.  But the rest of Lewis still felt like something of a mystery, even after all this time.  The arms were tan and taut from the sun, the neck long and graceful, too often hidden by the collar of a coat or, even in the wilderness, a cravat.  The broad shoulders tapered slightly to Lewis’s well- but softly-defined chest.  There was something marvelous and beautiful about the way that the skin stretched tight over Lewis’s chest, his stomach, his hips, and Clark could not help but wonder at it’s smoothness.  Clark’s eyes traced the lines of fine body hair, lighter than the hair on Lewis’s head, down the narrow waist flush with the trim hips to the base of Lewis’s cock.  Lewis’s legs were strong, the most muscular part of his body, and slightly bowed from a lifetime of horseback riding.  Clark slipped a hand underneath one leg and ran his fingers tenderly down Lewis’s firm calf.

Clark leaned over him and they shared a deep kiss.  Clark kept his eyes closed as they broke and spoke the words onto Lewis’s lips.

“You are magnificent.”

Clark’s lips traced the lines his eyes had just wandered.  One hand held his weight, the other stroking Lewis, fondling him, bringing him to rise.  He sucked gently on one of Lewis’s nipples before continuing.  “Everything about you—” He broke, giving the other nipple the same gentle treatment, “—is magnificent.”  Lewis closed his eyes but said nothing as Clark’s head sunk lower down his body, as Clark rubbed his soft, thick red hair across his hips.  He allowed himself a gasp and the luxury of feeling as Clark took his length into his mouth.

Sweat seasoned the earth as the evening sun sank on the tent, and Lewis felt joy, even in his pain.  When he was close to the edge of orgasm, he gave Clark the touch that he knew the other man craved, as though asking forgiveness for his earlier abuse.  His fingers tangled in Clark’s red hair and the other man moved up his length one last time before abruptly pulling away.  Wrapping his hands around Lewis’s shaft and leaving them to the rise and fall, Clark nuzzled his head beneath Lewis for a moment, sucking gently at the other man’s balls for a moment before running his tongue over them, then taking Lewis back into his mouth to finish him.

“Billy.”  Lewis whispered the name from somewhere deep within him as he came, one hand ripping into the fur of the animal skin he lay on, the other trembling on the back of Clark’s head.  Clark swallowed and rose, gasping for air, and laid his head on Lewis’s stomach.

And the two lovers were as one once again.

-

What was it that William Clark gave to Meriwether Lewis?

Was it absolution?

No.

Was it forgiveness?

Not even that.

But it was something that meant more.

It was understanding.


End file.
